ISAIAH HANKEL: Business Owners Prefer A GED To A Woke Harvard Degree

Harvard once stood as the pinnacle of American academia, a revered institution that shaped presidents, Nobel laureates, and Fortune 500 CEOs. Its name was a guarantee of excellence, a ticket to the elite. Today, however, a General Educational Development (GED) certificate might be a wiser investment. This isn’t hyperbole—it’s a sobering reality.

For the first time in modern history, a Harvard degree has become a liability. The university’s once-untarnished reputation now carries the stain of antisemitism, moral cowardice, DEI propaganda, and elitist decay. Employers are turning away. Voters are disillusioned. Everyday Americans see through the facade. The Harvard brand, once a golden seal, is now a warning label.

I’ve witnessed this decline firsthand. Over the last 12 years, I was invited to speak at Harvard to diverse audiences—undergraduates, PhDs, MDs, postdocs, and faculty. My last visit, on October 13, 2023, just six days after the October 7 attacks, was a turning point. What I saw was appalling: students and faculty openly calling for violence against Jewish students and supporters of Israel, including myself.

That same day, ABC News reported that Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, alongside other student groups, issued statements blaming Israel entirely for the “unfolding violence.” The rhetoric was not just inflammatory—it was unhinged.

Worse, the university’s response was deafening silence. Academic administrators and senior faculty I passed on campus did nothing to intervene. Later, I learned that many had joined the antisemitic protests, amplifying the hate. This wasn’t an isolated incident but the culmination of a trend I’d observed for years across American universities.

At Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other elite institutions, student bodies have steadily shifted from pro-American and pro-Israel sentiments to anti-American and antisemitic ideologies.

Take Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil as a case study.

A foreign student on a visa, Khalil emerged as a radical anti-Israel activist, orchestrating chaos during the 2024 pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas encampments. He openly called for violence against Jewish students and pushed for divestment from Israel, raising serious national security concerns due to his questionable ties.

Yet, to this day, many Ivy League academics defend Khalil and others like him, advocating for their right to remain in the U.S. Thousands of students at Harvard, Columbia, and other elite schools, many on foreign visas, espouse similar antisemitic and anti-American views.

This is why business owners, hiring managers, and ordinary Americans are rejecting Harvard graduates. A degree from Harvard—or any “woke” university steeped in ideological conformity—is increasingly seen as equivalent to a GED, but without the grit. The ivory tower has lost its luster.

Harvard’s moral and intellectual failures have rendered it a laughingstock. The tipping point came during a congressional hearing when a panel of university presidents, including Harvard’s,couldn’t unequivocally state whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated campus codes of conduct. Thanks to Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s pointed questioning, the world saw the truth: Harvard is no longer a serious institution. Its leadership is spineless, its values hollow.

Meanwhile, GED graduates are thriving. Without the burden of a $350,000 degree, they’re building businesses, mastering trades, serving in the military, and strengthening their communities. In maturity, patriotism, and common sense, they often outshine their Ivy League counterparts. These are the people wiring homes, repairing HVAC systems, welding steel, and launching startups with nothing but a bold idea and relentless work ethic.

The backlash against Harvard is gaining momentum. In Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and even Hollywood, CEOs and billionaires are saying “no thanks” to Ivy League resumes. A prominent hedge fund manager announced he would no longer hire from Harvard, citing its moral failures and ideological capture.

Donors are pulling back too—not just conservatives, but Jewish alumni, centrists, and liberals who feel betrayed by an institution they once cherished. They see what Harvard has become: a breeding ground for entitlement, dogma, and hypocrisy.

For business owners like me, the choice is clear. Would I rather hire someone who clawed their way through night school to earn a GED or a Harvard grad who spent four years mastering identity politics in an echo chamber of privilege? One understands the real America—its challenges, its values, its resilience. The other has been taught to resent it.

A quiet revolution is unfolding across the country. Employers, trade schools, apprenticeship programs, and the military are actively seeking out those who bypassed the four-year indoctrination camps of elite universities. These individuals aren’t being taught that math is racist or that America is inherently evil. They’re learning practical, tangible skills—how to build, fix, create, and contribute. They’re the backbone of a new American economy.

Contrast this with Harvard and its peers, where academic merit often takes a backseat to virtue signaling and ideological conformity. Dissent is punished, not debated. The goal isn’t to prepare students for meaningful careers but to churn out activists. Harvard isn’t producing the next generation of leaders—it’s mass-producing professional victims.

While Harvard graduates don crimson robes at commencement, GED holders are building the stages they walk on—and earning good money doing it. A Harvard degree, once a near-guarantee of success, is now a red flag. Imagine that.

The future of American innovation, leadership, and resilience lies not in Ivy League lecture halls but in garages, job sites, and community colleges. A GED doesn’t just certify knowledge—it often reflects character, determination, and a refusal to be swayed by dogma.

In today’s economy, those traits are worth more than any diploma.

Here’s to the welders, coders, mechanics, and entrepreneurs who chose hard work over debt and indoctrination. They’re not just the future of this country—they’re its present. Harvard? It’s a relic of a bygone era.

Dr. Isaiah Hankel, Ph.D., is a 3X best-selling author and CEO of Overqualified.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.